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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28237491">love turns the heart to and unknown (substance, fire on its fire).</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flustraaa/pseuds/flustraaa'>flustraaa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Bisexual Zuko (Avatar), Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Sokka (Avatar), M/M, Oblivious Zuko (Avatar), POV Sokka (Avatar), POV Zuko (Avatar), Sad Sokka (Avatar), Sad Zuko (Avatar), Sharing a Bed, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, The Gaang Learns How Zuko Got The Scar (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), bed sharing, ground sharing, i guess, idk how to tag, not beta we die like jet, uh, zukka - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:22:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,482</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28237491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flustraaa/pseuds/flustraaa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>it’s said that the gods once created a creature far too powerful— with two heads, two hearts, and one soul. fearing their power, they split these beings into two, forever doomed to find their diving pair and return to the stars or wander alone and looking for their missing half.<br/>(or, the zukka au where sokka can see into zuko’s life, and it still takes him a year to realise the idiot throwing fire in a tundra is the other half of the same idiot).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hakoda &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Iroh &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Katara &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Katara &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Ozai &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Sokka &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Suki &amp; Zuko (Avatar), The Blue Spirit &amp; Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong &amp; Sokka, Toph Beifong &amp; Zuko, Ursa &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Zuko &amp; Zuko's Crew (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>127</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>love turns the heart to and unknown (substance, fire on its fire).</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The first time it happens, Sokka is eight. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s a year before he loses his mother, and seven before he’ll meet his soulmate for the first time— almost eight and a half before he’ll realise who his soulmate really is. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is eight when his mother’s hands tug softly at the hairs she’s braiding into his wolf-tail, a sign that he’s a warrior just like his dad. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s eight when the world goes dark, and instead of slick, clouded ice— he sees grass beneath a small, right hand, a turtle duck snatching peas out of the left one that raised into the pond. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">His ears are ringing, but it’s not so loud that he can’t hear the giggles coming from the hand that feeds the small creature beneath him. There’s no colours— no bending, nothing to tell him what nation his soulmate is from. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">All he knows is that this person is not from the water tribe, and that he adores feeding turtle-ducks. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When he wakes up on the floor, Kya hovering over him with paradoxically warm eyes she only offers four words, “was it your soulmate?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Am I always gonna blackout?” Sokka lifts his head from the cool ground beneath, fumbling a bit as he presses his hand to his head woozily, “my head hurts.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Of course not, my little one,” she coos, pressing a hand to his cheek as he slowly finds his orientation again, “it’ll get easier. Everything gets easier with time.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Slowly, she guides him back to the cushion placed upon their floor and continues along with the braiding as if he hadn’t just keeled over from the sheer force of the vision before him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He wonders if his soulmate has had a vision yet— if they’ve passed out from the things Sokka’s sees on a daily basis.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He wonders what his soulmate thinks about being bound by an invisible thread to a boy in the Water Tribe.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Tui and La,” he finds himself whispering, far later; sometime deep in the dead of night as Katara mumbles in her sleep across from him. “Please don’t let him be from the Fire Nation. Please let him have good in him, because I don’t want them to bring out the evil in me.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He never tells anyone about the voice that whispers in the back of his head, sounding suspiciously like La— susurrations moving with each crash of the waves against the ice outside, “he needs you to bring out the good buried in him.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka can’t help but wonder how he knew his soulmate was a boy before his later visions— and maybe, just maybe, that’s what makes him realise soulmates truly are a divine pairing.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">An entire month passes before he sees his soulmate again— this time in a dream.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Unfortunately, it’s how he learns that whenever his soulmates name is spoken in a vision, he’s drowned in static as the world shifts beneath him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He does— however, catch fragments of the conversation, and the entire vision. He catches the fleeting form of a woman whispering soft words of comfort while his soulmates arms shake beneath him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">If he focuses hard hard enough he can feel the trepidation that causes tidal waves of tremors to pour down his chest, and forms sweat along his soulmates brow.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He sees the royal reds of the silk sheets beneath pale hands and he realises, belatedly that either his soulmate’s favourite colour is red— or he’s a member of the Fire Nation.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka’s hurled out of the dream— vision well before he can consider it any further.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Needless to say, he doesn’t fall asleep again that night.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As it turns out, his mother was wrong. No everything got better with time— and losing her the next year not never got easier.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He blames his soulmate for a long time— or maybe he blames the spirits and Gods— maybe he blames himself for getting the snippets for a year, and still not being able to ground himself enough to remain conscious the whole time.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Maybe he blames himself for letting Katara and their father think that they’d lost Kya and him on the same day— when they’d found him unconscious in a snowbank.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Maybe he blames his soulmate for choosing to give him a view of a pair of dual dao swords and skinned knees, in exchange for the inability to save his mother from the Southern Raiders.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Or maybe, he forgets all of those feelings when grief overwhelms him as he wakes from a forced slumber.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Maybe, he just holds what family he has left and prays that his soulmate never feels anything like this in their life.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">After his mother’s death, he forces his bond with his soulmate to the back burner. He suffers from migraines, and something that feels suspiciously like what father tells him withdrawal feels like.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">They still come, sometimes though.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">First, on the night that he watches a cloaked figure disappear from his soulmates view— his divine half’s eyes marred with tears, and broken whispers filling the air.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He stays in the fire nation boy’s eyes for a long time that night, watching as he settles back down against the bed and eventually into the fabric. </span>
</p><p class="p2">It’s the night Sokka learns he can see his soulmates dreams, too, if he tries hard enough (dream bending, he calls it offhandedly when he tells Katara the next morning).</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s that night he sees he soulmates body for the first time, his true image destroyed by a mirror at the end of a never ending hallway— he doesn’t dare consider the symbolism.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He wakes up panting, with a name he doesn’t recognise on his lips— <em>Ursa</em>.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He lets it ruminate on the tip of his tongue for what feels like and obscene amount of time before the shockwaves follow.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Belatedly, he thinks: <em>mom, don’t leave.</em></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka suddenly realises that maybe it’s only from a divine pairing that true strife can be born.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Later that day, he glances down at his mittens and allows his mind to wander. He ponders about what his soulmate sees— he wonders what all his other half knows of him; if he thinks Sokka is the monster in his story for simply being born a member of the Water Tribe.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s that thought that brings him to a point of realisation that is nearly debilitating.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka hates his soulmate because he’s from the fire nation... but what if there’s good buried somewhere deep inside of him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Naturally, Sokka begins lurking in his other half’s every moment— waking and sleeping.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It begins the first time he sees himself in his dreams— flashes of his memories whirring by in a cloudy fog.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">His soulmate dreams of him more than once— and something about that forces bumble-flies to erupt painfully in his stomach.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>He loves me</em>, Sokka considers, picking an invisible fire-lily that he’d seen in one of Gran-gran’s botany texts, <em>loves me not.</em></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka makes up his mind the day that fire rains down in the palm of hand towards his soulmate— he snaps out of it dry heaving so harshly that he can’t catch his breath for what feels like days.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>It would be an honour to love him one day, </em>Sokka decides, <em>and I will protect him whether, whether he loves me or loves me not. </em></span>
</p><p class="p2">Later he realises, to dream of someone is something far more powerful than to think of them. To dream of someone, is to devote even your most subconscious desires to them.</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">To dream of someone, for his soulmate to dream of him— Sokka concludes, is answer enough to the question.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He loves him.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is fifteen when he meets his soulmate— no, Sokka is fifteen when the exiled prince of the Fire Nation raids his village. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is fifteen, and throwing a boomerang at the boy across from him— the one who can’t be much older than he himself is. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He is fifteen when dread cements itself deep within his stomach, and he knows that something about Zuko— something about the circumstances they meet is all wrong. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Or maybe they’re all right. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is fifteen when he flees from his home, with his sister and the avatar with him; he’s riding on the back of an animal that should’ve been extinct— and he has to watch Katara and Aang be all.... Oogie together over their stupid matchy-matchy soul marks. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is fifteen when he begins to wonder if that motherfucker with his jerk-bending hands and stupid aureate eyes bares the same scar as his soulmate. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sokka is fifteen when he decides that Zuko could never be his soulmate— and if he had been, the young tribesman would never love him. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A son of the Fire Nation, he concludes, could never love and be loved... they were born from the sun, but not when they could see both sides of it. </span>
</p>
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